East Asia and Pacific

This study evaluates the effectiveness of training programs for workers retrenched from Chinese state-owned enterprises in the cities of Shenyang and Wuhan. A variety of impact estimators were applied, however ordinary least squares (OLS) controlling for observable characteristic s was robust. We find that training dampens reemployment prospects in Shenyang but improves them in Wuhan. Training impact estimates computed by propensity score and log odds ratio matching imposing various support condition rules, yielded estimates very similar to those from the OLS. The estimates suggest that participation in training reduces the probability of being employed one year after participation by about 6 percentage points in Shenyang, but increases the employment likelihood by about 8 percentage points in Wuhan. Among those who are reemployed, training does not have any effect on earnings.

Intervention settings: Urban (Shenyang and Wuhan).

Intervention description: Retraining and job search assistance, administered by local labor bureaus, to promote labor market entry of people laid off by state-owned enterprises. One month training courses in computer training, beauty and massage, hair cutting, sewing, toy making, cooking, repair training and driver education. Class sizes during the training sessions were often large with 200 to 300 workers in a small classroom.

Methodology: Three different treatment/comparison group samples analyzed using multiple methodologies that include prop score matching, matching on odds-ratios and OLS.

Sample: Adults.

Findings: Positive impact on employment probability in Wuhan. No effect on earning in Shenyang. Negative effect on employment probability in Shenyang.

This paper uses variation in policies and institutional characteristics to evaluate the impacts of village-level microfinance institutions in rural Thailand. To identify impacts, we use policies related to the successful/unsuccessful provision of services as exogenous variation in effective financial intermediation. We find that institutions, particularly those with good policies, can promote asset growth, consumption smoothing and occupational mobility, and can decrease moneylender reliance. Specifically, cash-lending institutions-production credit groups and especially women's groups-are successful in providing intermediation and its benefits to members, while buffalo banks and rice banks are not. The policies identified as important to intermediation and benefits: the provision of savings services, especially pledged savings accounts; emergency services; and training and advice. Surprisingly, much publicized policies such as joint liability, default consequences, or repayment frequency had no measured impacts.

Intervention settings: Rural.

Intervention description: Credit (some training in income-generation), savings, village-level MFIs, and some use production credit groups and women's groups.

This paper evaluates the short-term impact of Thailand's 'Million Baht Village Fund' program, among the largest scale government microfinance iniative in the world, using pre- and post-program panel data and quasi-experimental cross-village variation in credit-per-household. We found that the village funds have increased total short-term credit, consumption, agricultural investment, income growth (from business and labor), but decreased overall asset growth. We also found a positive impact on wages, an important general equilibrium effect. The foundings are broadly consistent qualitatively with models of credit-constrained household behavior and models of intermediation and growth.

Intervention settings: Rural and peri-urban.

Intervention description: One-time government grant to establish village banks that offer credit.

Findings: Positive impact on HH business and labor incomes
Female-headed HHs 10% more likely to have positive and above-average business incomes. Increase in HH consumption of elastic goods (e.g. fuel, meat, dairy). Increase in HH business income. No impact on business formation or investment.

Microcredit institutions spend billions of dollars fighting poverty by making small loans primarily to female entrepreneurs. Proponents argue that microcredit mitigates market failures, spurs micro-enterprise growth, and boosts borrowers' well-being. We tested these hypotheses with the use of an innovative, replicable experimental design that randomly assigned individual liability microloans (of $225 on average) to 1601 individuals in the Philippines through credit scoring. After 11 to 22 months, we found evidence consistent with unmet demand at the current price (a roughly 60% annualized interest rate): Net borrowing increased in the treatment group relative to controls. However, the number of business activities and employees in the treatment group decreased relative to controls, and subjective well-being declined slightly. We also found little evidence that treatment effects were more pronounced for women. However, we did find that microloans increase ability to cope with risk, strengthen community ties, and increase access to informal credit. Thus, microcredit here may work, but through channels different from those often hypothesized by its proponents.

Intervention settings: Urban

Intervention description: Individual credit with median loan size of $220, 37% of average borrower's net monthly income. Assessed impact of offering access to individual loans to marginal clients who otherwise would have been rejected.

Findings: Credit enabled clients to better manage economic risk. No conclusive evidence on business revenue. Negative impact on number of businesses of both women and men clients. Negative effect on the number of employees of both women and men clients.

We develop and test a simple model of limited attention in intertemporal choice. The model posits that individuals fully attend to consumption in all periods but fail to attend to some future lumpy expenditure opportunities. This asymmetry generates some predictions that overlap with models of present-bias. Our model also generates the unique predictions that reminders may increase saving, and that reminders will be more effective when they increase the salience of a specific expenditure. We find support for these predictions in three field experiments that randomly assign reminders to new savings account holders.

Findings: Entrepreneurs in the sample knew little about standard business practices and attached low value to learning management, but the training improved participants' business practices and recognition of importance of management knowledge. Male owners 20% more likely to participate in training given invitation than females. One year older increases probability of participating by 1-2%.

Land Rights and Economic Security for Women in Vietnam

Menon and Rodgers (2013)

Original Abstract:

Vietnam's 1993 Land Law created a land market by granting households land-use rights which could be exchanged, leased, inherited, sold or mortgaged. This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze whether increased land titling in women's names led to discernible improvements in women's economic security and household vulnerability. Using a matched sample of households from Vietnam's 2004 and 2008 Household Living Standards Survey, we find that on balance, land-use rights held exclusively by women or jointly by couples result in several beneficial effects including higher household expenditures, more education for girls and women, less housework, and lower household vulnerability to poverty. Results from interviews conducted in Vietnam support these conclusions, with evidence that one of the main channels through which these improvements occurred is increased bargaining power within the home.

Findings: Land use certification led to 5.3% higher per capita household expenditures when certificates were held by women and 3.6% higher when certificates were held by men (as compared to having no certificate). Certificates led to higher education for women, a lower proportion of women doing housework and fewer daily hours of housework. Certificates held by men and women both have an impact on poverty reduction.

Farmer Field Schools (FFS) are an intensive training approach introduced in the last decade in many developing countries to promote knowledge and uptake of ecologically sensible production approaches, and in particular, integrated pest management which minimises pesticide use. Because of the high training cost, the viability of the program depends crucially on the effectiveness of knowledge diffusion from trained farmers to other farmers. This paper uses panel data from Indonesia to assess the extent of diffusion of knowledge regarding integrated pest management from trained farmers to other farmers. The results confirm that better knowledge leads indeed to reduced pesticide use, and that trained farmers make a modest gain in knowledge. However, there is no significant diffusion of knowledge to other farmers who reside in the same villages as the trained farmers. These results imply that revision in the training procedures and curriculum need to be considered if the FFS approach is to become viable and effective.

Intervention settings: Rural.

Intervention description: Farmer field schools.

Methodology: Difference in differences estimation.

Sample: 320 households in villages that had not yet been exposed to farmer field schools.

Findings: Modest effect of FFS on knowledge of participants. No effect on the knowledge of their neighbors.

Women are an important mainstay of agricultural production in China, though their access to land is characterized by even greater ambiguity than that of their male counterparts. As part of its path toward liberalization, China undertook agricultural land management policy reforms that were aimed at increasing the security of land tenure rights, but these reforms have paradoxically exacerbated the uncertainty surrounding women's claims to land. Utilizing sample survey data collected from 412 rural households in Shaanxi and Hunan provinces in 2002, this paper documents and analyzes gender differences in land allocations. The findings of this study shed light on the degree to which community characteristics coupled with current local practices (such as frequency of reallocation) influence gender disparities. Results suggest that a growing number of women experience loss of contract land coincident with marrying, and this trend may be expected to increase given the current direction of land policy.

Intervention settings:

Intervention description: Land titling.

Methodology: Logit and hazard models with 2002 household survey.

Sample: 412 households (Shaanxi and Hunan provinces).

Findings: Landlessness among women in China's low-income households is associated with less decision-making authority and suggests a reduced status within their households. China's land management policy reforms after 1978, which shifted land use rights from collectives to households, have resulted in a higher incidence of landlessness among married women.

This paper analyzes multiple measures of married women's empowerment in the domestic sphere in 56 communities spanning five Asian countries (India, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand). At issue is whether community or individual characteristics are better predictors of women's empowerment, and whether different dimensions of empowerment are similarly related to community or individual traits. The analysis shows that, consistent with the theoretical approach employed here, which treats gender relations as heavily influenced by community norms and values, community is a far stronger predictor of women's empowerment than are individual traits. The relationship of both community and individual traits to different measures of empowerment vary, suggesting that "empowerment" is inherently a multi- dimensional phenomenon, with women relatively empowered in some spheres but not in others. The primary policy implication is the importance of changing community norms and values about gender relations for empowering women. The results also suggest that policies to raise women's age at marriage, enhance their educations and open greater employment opportunities will also help to empower them, at least in some respects.

Intervention settings:

Intervention description: Land titling.

Methodology: OLS regressions of wives' domestic economic power with 1993-94, authors' own survey.

Sample: 7,287 women from five countries.

Findings: Land ownership has positive impact on women's authority in making household-expenditure decisions in India and Thailand.